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The unintented "bosses nerf" with catapult is actually a good thing


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With the recent addition of catapult it's become fairly easy to defeat almost all of the bosses, considering the required recourses are amassed. Thus the outcry over "the new cheese" has been quite vocal for couple of days.

Not arguing here, most of the fights are a joke with this new setup. But this is actually a good thing and healthy for the casual community.

Have you considered how many players actually killed said Toadstools, Bee Queens and Fuelweavers without any form of cheese or abuse? I’m pretty sure the number is about 5-10%. And this is the number of, let's say, hardcore players. What about the others then?

With this new addition more casual players will get a chance to beat those bosses and get the loot, and even get better with time. New content will be here soon so it’s a good thing that more people will actually beat the old one with some not game-breaking mechanics and feel encouraged to explore new horizons. Also, it’s a common practice in MMOs to nerf old dungeons when new ones are out (I’m not favoring such approach though). But Klei actually managed to "nerf" old content without it being watered down, so I think it’s a good change overall.

 

Spoiler

(P.S. 5 hunger penalty for crafting is absurd, either make it 1-2 or remove it completely)

 

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1 hour ago, Hell-met said:

defeating bosses is not supposed to be a requirement for new players. they're an achievement.

Though I tend to agree on that, don't forget raid bosses (the HP-sponge type) are game content as well. If roughly only 1-5% of all your player-base mass accesses said content.. oh well, from a developer point-of-view isn't that wasted content to be made?! I said in past some statistics would be nice to be gathered-and-published by Klei (akin the ones done for first run of Forge and Gorge - albeit that was theoretically easier being from servers rented and maintained by Klei themselves) regarding how vast mass of players operates, what they do in game, how much they survive, how much they actually play per specific time unit (be it hours in a week or the like), how much they fight vs foraging etc. At least that would give us a tangible base for further substantiated discussions on content and balance, not only from perspective of a very very small minority, usually pretty adept and dedicated at/to the game - aka us forumites actively engaging in topic-discussions. Plus don't forget: this is not a competitive game, PvP-style, for those "achievements" to actually matter beyond subjective level; having legit cut-corners is nice and can be fun, as DST is pretty much a family-friendly silly game, and not all people are try-hard fighting junkies (I reckon this type accounts for only <5% of all player-base but take this with a proverbial grain of salt if you will).

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36 minutes ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

Though I tend to agree on that, don't forget raid bosses (the HP-sponge type) are game content as well. If roughly only 1-5% of all your player-base mass accesses said content.. oh well, from a developer point-of-view isn't that wasted content to be made?! I said in past some statistics would be nice...

I agree that it would be interesting to see statistics, e.g. how many players have participated in a successful FW fight. Your numbers might not be that far off. HOWEVER: I am not sure how high the number would have to be for the content to not be considered wasted. Certainly nowhere near 100%, probably not even anywhere near 30%.

In these forums, we get at regular intervals whining by people who think that the game is too easy, and that Klei should be making more content for the proverbial top 1%. While I completely disapprove of said whining, I do think that even in a non-pvp game, there need to be long term goals that are only achievable with a lot of work and dedication, otherwise people will be losing interest quickly. A survival game only hooks you initially if it is actually hard to survive. Eventually you learn to survive, but you will only carry on if there is more, higher mastery, as it were, to strive for.

I feel like a structure that, with the investment of extremely abundant resources, almost trivialises the ultimate raid boss of the game is a step in the wrong direction, and I do not see why the OP would think that everybody, after a few hours of DST experience, is entitled to a bone armor, or to a BQ crown, or to easily perpetually resetable ruins. There is plenty of play in this game even if you have no hope of soloing the fuelweaver, in fact precisely if you have no hope of soloing the fuelweaver.

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1 hour ago, x0VERSUS1y said:

Though I tend to agree on that, don't forget raid bosses (the HP-sponge type) are game content as well. If roughly only 1-5% of all your player-base mass accesses said content.. oh well, from a developer point-of-view isn't that wasted content to be made?! I said in past some statistics would be nice to be gathered-and-published by Klei (akin the ones done for first run of Forge and Gorge - albeit that was theoretically easier being from servers rented and maintained by Klei themselves) regarding how vast mass of players operates, what they do in game, how much they survive, how much they actually play per specific time unit (be it hours in a week or the like), how much they fight vs foraging etc. At least that would give us a tangible base for further substantiated discussions on content and balance, not only from perspective of a very very small minority, usually pretty adept and dedicated at/to the game - aka us forumites actively engaging in topic-discussions. Plus don't forget: this is not a competitive game, PvP-style, for those "achievements" to actually matter beyond subjective level; having legit cut-corners is nice and can be fun, as DST is pretty much a family-friendly silly game, and not all people are try-hard fighting junkies (I reckon this type accounts for only <5% of all player-base but take this with a proverbial grain of salt if you will).

except DST was designed for like, 6 players at once?

if you choose to play solo it's your choice, however you agree with the handicaps that come with it.

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2 hours ago, Majestix said:

I feel like a structure that, with the investment of extremely abundant resources, almost trivialises the ultimate raid boss of the game is a step in the wrong direction, and I do not see why the OP would think that everybody, after a few hours of DST experience, is entitled to a bone armor, or to a BQ crown, or to easily perpetually resetable ruins. There is plenty of play in this game even if you have no hope of soloing the fuelweaver, in fact precisely if you have no hope of soloing the fuelweaver.

From what I can take via Winona's Catapults specs, I believe they are intended for converting casuals into regular DST players (we could also argue that Klei doesn't do a proper job in the balancing department in general, yet that's a thing for another time) because they improve access to said raid-boss content. Mentioned "trivialisation" is so-and-so subjective: you still need to plan and properly setup a Catapult-farm of DF for example so as it won't all go into a glorious smoke ending with you vigorously dead. Or not overlap with other world-events that will smash your precarious catapults setup.

 

Do I consider Winona all well-rounded and ok as she is atm? No. Initially I thought the -5 hunger drain is ok, fair, yet after testing reworked Winona for a bit more I do now believe is annoying and conflicting with her "I love working and building mechanical devices" lore aspect. Do I consider her Catapult as overpowered? Not really. I love "cheese" (oh the mischievousness of it all!) in any game as much as I love a challenge when am in mood for it. But most of all I like comedy, dark humor and the like. And am very amused when I see a Treeguard being "hit in da face" hard by 3 rocks at a time (I usually do now a 3-catapults-on-1-nitre-generator strat for a small in base dope defense system) while I do loops around MrMsEnt, hehe. Likewise I crack a hard laugh when solo-ing DF between 2x 6-catapults-on-1-nitre-generator layout and see Balls-Face there getting stun-locked by me-and-my-catapults alone (I jokingly call Winona's Catapults LazyRangedWigfrids 'cause of same Spear-damage but 2.5s cooldown). Still when playing with friends I pretty much prefer the classic F-spam-face-tank route, as I can't properly solo-kite on pubs, having a $hit internet connection that perpetually rubberbands to the point I have inconsistencies even when kiting spiders.

 

Thus it ends yet another subjective post in the thread ;)

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While Winona and the catapults could definitely use some work, I don't think that the power level of the Catapults by itself is a bad thing. More accessibility to more content, and more legit ways to eliminate tedium? Heck yes.
I think think the power will also make less experienced players more confident in their abilities and willing to try new things...if Winona gets some changes that make her gameplay more appealing.

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1 hour ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

@Green Crystal lets just set all bosse's health to 1000 and problem solved, now any casual can beat any boss with just a bit of effort. No other change just that. Then there would be no need for cheese or any difficult strategy at all and everyone's a winner! You like that idea?

this isn't what we are talking about.

we are talking about the 50% of dst playerbase who barely kill deerclops because they feel he's too hard.

getting easy help ( catapults ) make them be able to kill deerclops easily.

and yeah. deerclops is HARD for some people out there, not everyone is instantly perfect at a uncompromising survival game.

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1 hour ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

@Green Crystal lets just set all bosse's health to 1000 and problem solved, now any casual can beat any boss with just a bit of effort. No other change just that. Then there would be no need for cheese or any difficult strategy at all and everyone's a winner! You like that idea?

I use "automatic health adjustment" mod because managing these huge HP-numbers when you are mostly a solo player is a little... But this was not the point. 

It's fine to have difficulty and challenge and not everyone has to overcome such things but A New Reign with all party-content was released back in 2017 iirc, and not so many entites have been added up untill now. Likewise I believe it's completely fine  after certain amount of time for non-hardcore players to be able to complete these challenges and get to new ones, which are about to be delivered. In order to do so usually developers have to nerf old  content but here I see a better method.

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I'm sorry but no, this is not a healthy change for the game, for me, raid bosses are boring, cheese is boring, it's not entertaining killing them, it's very high risk and the rewards are bleh, and while I do agree the high risk low reward thing is the magic of Don't Starve, damage sponges for me are just boring and a waste of time but well that's how DST works, it's made to play with people, sadly I'm not a man of friends so I use my mod and I proceed to play.

I still think giving armor to raid bosses is a better option to make them fun rather than cheese with catapults making yourself playing with a specific character. 

Also the dude above who said DST was designated for 6 players, I really doubt that DST is for 6 players, it's the max number though, I think most of playerbase or either play alone or with one or two friends.

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2 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

@Green Crystal lets just set all bosse's health to 1000 and problem solved, now any casual can beat any boss with just a bit of effort. No other change just that. Then there would be no need for cheese or any difficult strategy at all and everyone's a winner! You like that idea?

This is what we call a strawman. Rather than arguing against the points that have been made, you've instead decided to argue against an intentionally ridiculous argument that nobody has said except for yourself. You're doing nothing except showing that you can't come up with an argument against the original post.

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Winona is only the beginning of new content, a bunch of character reworks and new characters. Add TIME to all your equations people, the game will not stay "exactly like this" for too long, and I doubt they want the game to be trivialized.

I think it's too early to request major boss beefs or catapults nerfs. Expect balance tweaks to everything throughout 2019.

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Eh, I think it's good to discuss these things from the starting gates. Gives an indication of what people think about the updates, and which direction should be taken from there.
The updates today are a great step, and seem to have taken some of our discussions into account.

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5 hours ago, Sunset Skye said:

This is what we call a strawman. Rather than arguing against the points that have been made, you've instead decided to argue against an intentionally ridiculous argument that nobody has said except for yourself. You're doing nothing except showing that you can't come up with an argument against the original post.

Oh noes, someone who knows what a strawman is :^o

I was just making a comparison. I could argue against these points elaborately, but I've covered these sorts of points already elsewhere, so I thought a simple comparison between specifically the idea of allowing to cheese everything with catapults with setting all boss health to 1000 would suit well to give thought for OP and anyone who thinks it's a good idea to reconsider.

I guess may be some people like the idea of having a relatively simple "skip bossfight" while still getting the boss loot method, but exploits like that can really ruin parts of games what would otherwise be well designed challenges.

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4 hours ago, Sunset Skye said:

This is what we call a strawman. Rather than arguing against the points that have been made, you've instead decided to argue against an intentionally ridiculous argument that nobody has said except for yourself. You're doing nothing except showing that you can't come up with an argument against the original post.

it's actually hyperbole, a rhetorical approach to criticizing ideas. 

Remember not all arguments are logical, I'm not even sure the OP has an axiom to begin with, let alone deduction ...

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The content didn't really need to be nerfed in any way- You're worried that people never beat the bosses, so therefore, they never see the content.

Yet you forgot about one key thing- Klaus still exists. He exists because he is a (general) way for everybody to be able to get boss loot, albeit, it's a gamble of if you're actually going to get something useful or another useless down feather/sandstone/spiderhat to sort of counterbalance the fact that he is intentionally the easiest raid boss in the game (Excluding Mgoose, if you consider them one like some do)

However, there are some things Klaus does not grant. For example, he doesn't give a shadow atrium, no fuelweaver loot, and no napsack blueprint. This makes sense, as the fights you're intended to do are quite a bit challenging. So, now the issue is, how do you make the general playerbase get this content? For all the little nooblets and solo players, how can they possibly achieve this content in their game?

As someone that plays solo a lot, somehow, I managed to get all this content. Bonkers, right? I know. Clearly I must be a friend of the tilde.
Well, believe it or not, using experience and guides and strategies developed by others, my own critical thinking and skill, and unique setup and ideas, I was able to beat these things by myself, alone. Was it hard? Oh, yeah. I died a lot too. I died so much. So... so so much....

But here's the thing, let's contextualize this issue a bit. Let's look at a wider scale than "Wow these bosses sure are huge damage sponges"

Don't Starve Together is a multiplayer version of a singleplayer game. As such, it has many, many changes for multiplayer. For example, almost anyone with experience can tell you that Death, which was a very serious mechanic in the base game, is one of the most trivial factors in DST. Just carry a life giving amulet on you at all times and you're good. Don't even need to wear it. Let's also not forget that meat effigies no longer have any actual downside, making them also an incredibly good option to instantly get out of jail free. Other various mechanics that made the game so uncompromising have themselves been compromised, with moon caller staves, sandstorms, on demand teleporting, certain item rarities, etc. 

Is this a bad thing?

Not really, no. It softens the game a bit to make it more accessible for all audiences. Everyone knows that for a more crude and less friendly version to just play singleplayer. So then, let's think about this new content... If these things are designed to already make the game easier for all audiences, especially, making the punishment of death borderline easier to avoid than going insane, then, well, just maybe...

It's encouraged.

That sounds ridiclious, right? A game developer that WANTS you to die? What is this, an uncompromising survival game?!

Well, when you think about it like that, then all of a sudden, it makes more sense. For a better example, look no further than Toadstool- The entire reason Misery Toadstool exists is because he's basically what the original toadstool was, in case you forgot. When OG Toadstool debuted, the community was pretty darn vocal about it. Just because it's "Don't Starve Together," doesn't mean it should be read as "Don't Starve with 6 Wolfgangs" And do you know what happened next? Klei listened. Toadstool no longer had a 5 minute window and 100K health. He was weakened, and thus, possible to beat in solo.

Did it happen the first day? No. Not a chance.

I don't think it happened until maybe... 3 or 4 days after the change. But when that happened, it ignited the community. All of a sudden, it was possible to beat him alone, but it was resource intensive, it took practice, it took skill, timing, strategy, plotting out beforehand, etc. It was HARD, but at the end of the day, people could do it. You could barely scrape by, and live with the trophy knowing that you had forever beaten what was thought by a good chunk of people to be borderline impossible.

Now imagine if we had the Winona of today. Heck, Toadstool probably wouldn't have even been changed initially, because the nanosecond he'd be released, people would've just made a huge arena of catapults, solved the problem, and been done with it, walking away with their loot which was barely "earned". This isn't fair to

A: Literally every other character
B: The intended game mechanic
C: Even the player that did it, because you essentially gave them a great big kiss for taking an obviously easier solution.

Another bit of context:

"It was already possible to cheese toadstool and other bosses, so therefore, this should be okay."

Just because another similar instance of something exists, doesn't make it magically okay. That's like saying if someone said something incredibly offensive and played it off as a joke, they should be able to get off free because other offensive humor exists.

Even then, the other cheese methods require more actual game knowledge to understand. With this, it's just understanding Winona's mechanics and abusing them.

So overall, what makes that so bad? After all, you can still always fight these bosses the normal way.

Well then, why do people always wall in the dragonfly's lava pools? Oh, forgot about things like that?

Because no matter what, people will always be inclined to go the easy way. Barely anybody that can even take down toadstool bothers with misery toadstool already, not because he's too hard to beat solo, but because... well, why would you? You can already basically get the loot you want from the normal toadstool, you just can't infinitely clone shroom skin, which is the only real purpose for napsacks anyway. 

If you are selling something, and say "Hot dogs! Hot dogs! Best hot dogs around, only $10! Or, you can get the same hot dog, for only a nickel, just because."

Do you think, logically, that ANYBODY that knows any better would choose to pay $10 for the same hot dog they could get for $0.05? Now that poor salesman is going out of business, because his... interesting marketing practice turned out to be unprofitable. The same thing goes for bosses; if you rob... basically the only features in the game with any semblance of any difficulty left of their, well, difficulty, by simply using and abusing the easy road, then what's the point of having them? Just hand me my mushroom hat and light and I'll be on my way, I don't even want to bother with the stupid frog. 

Again, let me just summarize what I'm trying to convey. Almost all of the boss loot is already easy to obtain through Klaus, so we don't need cheesy ways to take down enemies. The enemies are there for the challenge they intend to present, not just another hurdle to knock over on your way to setting up a mega base for that tasty tasty dragon furnace or mushlamp.

Sorry for the complete wall of text, but I just felt like putting my opinion on bosses out there. You can all feel free to absolutely dissect the crap out of this post if you want, after all, this is just my opinion, and I'm just 1 person in a game with a huge playerbase.

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2 hours ago, minespatch said:

I have a idea:

How about boss updates for every three updated characters? Deerclops doesn't need a update due to the lazers they gave her two years ago.

I'd still love to see an icy version of the laser in the base game after year 1. Gameplay can be made more interesting with stuff like that without blowing up difficulty.

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25 minutes ago, __IvoCZE__ said:

Multi-quote them from the ''elswhere'' post to this post?

Good point, should have referenced this before. I looked through my posts and seems like I only once referenced this sort of issue.

Spoiler

 

This post mentions that the catapult cheese isn't something to be left in place, just because there exist other cheese methods like Wicker's tentacle book.

May be I should have still addressed the main point at the beginning, seeming as I'm given this much trouble for a post that tried to counter a ridiculous point with another ridiculous point. Guess my rep doesn't let me do that, huh.

 

 

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12 hours ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

May be I should have still addressed the main point at the beginning, seeming as I'm given this much trouble for a post that tried to counter a ridiculous point with another ridiculous point. Guess my rep doesn't let me do that, huh.

2

You are Abadabadoo.

On 3/12/2019 at 4:50 AM, Green Crystal said:

snip

 

Your post gives us some interesting things to think about concerning exploits and mechanics (both intended and unintended) It's a fine line to walk, trying to strike a balance between fair and fun. I think unfair things can be fun especially when its against AI (i.e. not PVP where the other person could be frustrated by the use of exploits). At the same time, it can also be fun to play fairly against these AI and challenge yourself.

... That being said, nerfing catapults or tentacles... won't fix the fact that how bosses and uh, basically just every mob behaves in this game is easily exploited. If you wanted to fix this issue some major exploits would need to be addressed, and as I said, it's a fine line. I can't say I'd be all too pleased if pathfinding was overhauled so that I'd be forced to deal with lavae and grumble bees during their respective boss fights as I'm really not a fan of the whole "stock up on dozens of healing foods and armour to win" approach. They should probably fix how easy it is to get out of bounds though, there are all sorts of nasty ways that trick can be used to cheese bosses and even grief (e.g. running items like the celestial orb or chester's eyebone off the map.)

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Every character rework will compete with each other in terms of how much damage you can deal and avoid/sustain (Bosses and PvP) compared to Wolfgang, how effective you are at managing base or building boss arenas opposed to Wickerbottom or is it easier to survive overall like WX having higher stats while being buffed on demand by Wicker.

Webber has icon design character reworks should be build around. He unique playstyle, has manageble disadvantages and also minor perks. His spider army combat potential is alternative to rabbit farms, being a monster denies him certain interactions with pig and Bunnymen. Eating monster meat, having a silk beard are some minor, but usefull for new players perks, that don't break game difficulty design.

 

Winona catapults just overpower anything Spider army can offer vs most bosses making kills easy and guaranteed. If you had to operate catapult yourself or by any other player, you could even buff its damage if needed, but creating fields of automatic catapults just makes it unfair to other characters, making power creep deeper and more difficult to balance with every character rework.

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